


moving forward

by worshippingbones



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Gen, Zombies, in the flesh - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 13:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worshippingbones/pseuds/worshippingbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieren works towards moving on and making the most of his second life. Post-finale angst and recovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	moving forward

**Author's Note:**

> Tons of character introspection; may or may not continue this. This has been a result of a lot of finale feels and free time. Rambling, not particularly pretty, but I gotta work through some feels.

Kieren was not moving and it felt better that way.

He was laying in his bed, in his room, in his parent's house, perfectly still. The covers rested on his chest, folded just so that they brushed his chin, and his eyes were alternately locked on the ceiling and squeezed tight.

The summer afternoon seemed to hum. Down the block, a boring neighbor was revving their lawnmower, and the low grumble blended with the buzz of bees outside his window screen. He examined the imperfections in the ceiling.

A breeze drifted over him, bothering the watercolor papers tacked to the wall, the only movement in the dim room.

The sun was setting slowly and he felt like he could've been cold. Neighboring children were running around in the lawn in bare feet. Kieren could smell the grass, feel the dirt as clearly as he felt the breeze and the blanket on his chest, hear their excited shrieking as they tackled each other. He remembered running around and playing.

It was a week since Kieren had watched a man shovel dirt over Rick's immaculate coffin. He had a clear image of him all bunched up in that coffin, just big enough for him, his hands crossed on his chest. The noise of dirt hitting the oak top followed him for days and he felt like he heard it faintly when it got too quiet.

Night fell soon after and Kieren was in a hopeless trance. His parents gave him enough privacy not to call for dinner.

He was still motionless aside from the occasional sigh and scratch, but the exterior didn't portray how fast his brain was working, what his heart was doing, what hoops his senses were jumping through.

The week had been a blur. He remembered that normal- living- people had jobs and responsibilities. He lay in bed, pretended to eat, reminisced, cried the best he could, dry-heaved and didn't sleep. He went on walks. He tried to draw.

This went on for a few weeks. His parents assumed a hands-off demeanor that they pushed was respectful, but he knew they just didn't want to deal with it. It wasn't new. He didn't have the strength to ask for help or to seek companionship out. He stayed away from the world and lay in bed.

Slowly, his days got longer, and the endless ebb and sigh of sadness ate at him. It lost its appeal. He started to feel nervous, just being here, so slow-moving. He started to think about Amy. Where was she? Could he write her?

This was his second lease on life. This was a chance to start over – totally, completely, forever. Thoughts crawled into his mind for a few days and started picking at the darkness there, like a human with a scab, or a door – you have to open it, it's there, and if you bug it, progress happens.

He got up one day with sudden inspiration, flung the covers off with conviction, stood up and put his cover up and contacts on with more dedication that he had been able to muster in weeks. The force of his actions frightened him at first – and then they felt freeing. He could move. What else could he do?

There was no Rick, but that wasn't the only thing that had changed. He had a new appreciation for life and everything that came with it. He lost exactly what he had lost before. He couldn't act like the feeling was new.

He couldn't hide forever. If anything, Rick would want him moving on.

So he'd move on as best he could, he figured. There was no way to tell if it would work unless he put on those shoes and that hoodie and strode out of that house towards a goal. Maybe he could write Amy.

This helped. It felt like waking up.

...

Despite the Walker's personal tragedy, the discrimination did not stop. Kieren may have woken up, but he was ahead of the pack in his confidence – the sight of him made hands slide over children's eyes, made otherwise calm individuals cross the street, made OPEN signs flip CLOSED early.

He had never experienced anything like this in his prior life. It was raw and ugly and surprising, but what took the edge off was that most days, Jem insisted on accompanying him to and from errands – just in case. She was no longer packing, but she'd slap her HVF armband on over her jacket and tell people off on a whim for looking at Kieren sidelong. He was still her brother. He was her Kieren and that would never change, pooled arteries or pumping blood.

She was curious about the condition in a morbid way, and had a way of bursting forth with questions that intimidated her much shyer brother. He occasionally thought that she and Amy might get along, if they hadn't started off on such a bad foot. Two powerful personalities like Jem and Amy had the power to do anything, if fused right. He made a note to reintroduce the two when Amy came back, if she ever did.

She piped up with thoughts whenever she wanted to, just like Amy, and the similarity always brightened his day.

There were things you had to expect from Jemima, like the imminent stomping upon unbelievably painful details. She made sure to pepper him with strange questions while he worked at perfecting his new eating system.

They had designed it to save face in public and restore Kieren's habits back to normal as much as possible. Kieren would always order a small meal, as small as he could, and then tackle the meal very, very slowly. He would put small chunks in his mouth and chew, then politely bend down to spit it into a napkin. Halfway through the meal he would declare (for anyone in the vicinity to hear) that he was absolutely stuffed and couldn't do the rest and Jem would take it from there.

It had been shockingly useful. Once suspecting diners near them saw him putting food in his mouth they'd stop staring and go back to eating, apparently completely convinced that he was "safe".

Jem would do anything to lighten his mood. They went out to eat once a week.

Just like he and Rick used to, before he was shipped out.

After a month or so of this once-a-week routine, Jem started to pull away and Kieren filled up his new spare time with drawing. He missed their dates, regardless, but she fell oddly silent when he tried to bring it up.

(AN: Hello, my darlings! What you just read is the brand-spanking-new revision of the first two chapters in honor of my views on FF hitting over 2,000! I added content and polished it quite a bit. Enjoy and review, doves!)

...

A month later, Kieren got a job.

A month after that, Kieren got into a fight with Jem's boyfriend that he lost, embarrassingly and predictably, in front of a bunch of people at a bar. He had always been slight of stature – a perfect compliment to Rick's bulk – and his mother fretted and cried as she looked over the ripped skin on his face. There were no bruises anymore; the punch had simply torn a small bit of his delicate skin under his right eye. He sat on the couch, raw knuckles seeming to burn as he tightened his hands into fists and then relaxed them, blocking out the angry drone of his father lecturing him on violence, manhood, and responsibility. What he did, though, had moral consequences past a 20-something getting into a bar fight.

PDS sufferers were often seen as uncontrollable or on the verge of violent outbreaks, which was part of the reason the public had so much difficulty assimilating them back into communities. What many people at the local bar knew was that a rotter had gotten angry out of nowhere and attacked a young man and his girlfriend. What they didn't know is that the man's name was Brandon and he had provoked Kieren. What they also didn't know was that the girlfriend was the rotter's sister, and that the man had gone down swinging and shouting slurs against Kieren's condition. The last thing they didn't know was that the rotter hadn't attacked, he had punched, and the victim had punched back, with a lot more accuracy and muscle behind the fist.

Jem came home shortly after Kieren had settled on the couch, inspecting his new gash in a hand mirror. His parents had given up on alternating between lecturing and fretting, and had retired to separate parts of the house to worry. Jem settled beside Kieren, unable to look him in the eye.

"Sorry 'bout him. I'm kinda glad you did that."

Kieren sighed and tossed the mirror aside. "I'm not. I didn't think about it. I'm gonna be in deep shit."

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think people saw? Nobody heard us talking, they just saw me.. lunge."

"You—you definitely punched, though!" Jem leapt off the couch. "You punched him! It's not like you bit him! Oh, shit, I hadn't thought—Kieren, that's really bad."

"I know."

"Don't go out tonight." She readjusted her ponytail and stretched before heading out of the room. "I'll grab you whatever you need."

Kieren spent the night watching bad TV, flipping his phone around in his lap, eyes unfocused, waiting for Jem to come home. She didn't, and he slid further and further down the couch, eventually succumbing to a deep sleep in which he had bright, shiny nightmares and dull dreams.

He was vaguely roused by the snippets of conversation between his parents, a closed door, a dropped glass and a curse word. The beep of the microwave, the absence of sound except for soft footsteps as someone stepped over his outstretched legs and turned the TV off, and the next time his eyes met light it was 7 AM in the morning. His parents took care not to wake him, and he found a note from them sitting on the scarred up end table next to the couch.

Hi, Kier –

I'm off to work and your mum is going to be running errands all day. We'll do your shot when I get home.

Do you have anything in mind for dinner tonight?

Text your sister for me and ask.

Love you,

\- Dad

The note was crumpled up and tossed in the waste bin as Kieren sighed and reached for his phone, certain that his sister wouldn't reply now, since he had been texting her all night. She was probably out with Brandon, he figured, and sent her a simple text with his dad's request. The house was silent and he sat with his phone in hand, dully lit, as he listened to the clicks and creaks of the house, the light summer rain on the windows.

Days like this – warm, wet, humid, quiet - made him feel like he was rotting, and he immediately reached up and touched the tiny torn bit under his eye. That could be covered up easily enough, but it was a nasty reminder.

There was no clotting blood and scabs and restorative cell work in his body now. People and accidents could make permanent impressions on him, things he would keep until- he died? He was killed? He gave up again?

It felt permanent, and that was one of the strangest things. As Amy had said, he had smashed the clock. The only end he feared was an end brought by a different hand. He could terminate his participation whenever he wanted to. There was no natural guide to take him away anymore.

He could do anything he wanted, he reminded himself, as long as he avoided more discrimination.

... 

Days later, someone at work noticed him and decided to get loud.

On one hand, Kieren understood. The concept of him was terrifying – the way a tiger or a virus is terrifying, unstoppable, alien and stronger than you – but on the other hand, he was not that person anymore and he was just trying to get his minimum wage for the day.

People occasionally looked at him too long. He never fooled himself into thinking that no one noticed, and he was used to looking up from the register to find a gaggle of teenage girl eyes fixed on him, huddled together, breath suspended in their throats, too shy to leave and too scared to come to the counter. This woman had a different way of handling it.

"I can't believe it," she piped up, tottering to the counter on unsteady legs, gripping a walker to assist in her shuffle. "It's really one of them!"

Kieren had dreaded this day.

"You're a dead boy, aren't you! Look up at me. Here, c'mon, look up at me."

Kieren kept his eyes lowered, pretending to do anything at the cash register, anything to not engage her. He was alone in front, his other coworkers were out of earshot.

"You've got some nerve, working in public." Everyone in line was looking him over, analyzing the skin, the hair, the eyes, the scratch on his cheek. "Can you believe this thing serves people food?"

A few people moved away from her, avoiding confrontation; Kieren's eyes welled with tears, frightened by being put on the spot and shamed by the honest, blatant hatred he was being served.

"Not safe to have him here. I'm going to speak with the manager."

"My manager knows," Kieren said softly, speaking for the first time since the beginning of her tirade. "I'm on my medication. Please move so- so that other customers can get in line, ma'am."

Something happened then that Kieren wouldn't forget for the rest of his life.

In his short time on this earth, he had been thrown a lot of looks, both good and bad. He had seen the eyes soften and the lips turn up, he had seen the brow furrow and the lips purse, he had seen a grin widen the face of a friend and a smirk twist the face of a foe, but he had never been looked at like this.

The woman gave him a glare beyond measure. In the moments that he was stunned, he wondered if he had just imagined it – maybe he was making a mountain out of a molehill, because her hatred seemed to burst out of her form in that look. It was a volatile mix of hatred and cold, deep fear that burned through her milky blue eyes in the mere seconds she made eye contact with him before turning away. It put the fear of god in him, and for just a moment, he wondered if he was the earth's plague in human form. He wondered if he should've been put to rest via shotgun years ago, and he wondered if he should be underground, not wearing an apron and punching in orders. He wondered if he could kill himself again.

... 

Two months later, Kieran started college.

By now, he was numerically much older than some of the participants – the quad and pathways were crowded with nervous new adults just barely out of their teenage skin, where as he was already in his twenties. He often felt the nervous urge to make up for the time he lost while he had been dead, running around and killing. He was trying to do more than he could, which was a coping method that the brochures had warned his parents about. He didn't fit everything on that bulleted list, but that one was certainly right.

His cashiering job was doing well. He was a steady worker with a shy smile and a quick hand for money. His condition was the only thing that ever stood as a detriment to his work ethic, as he found it hard to smile with children open-mouthed, staring.

He did everything he could to comfort these kids – even going so far as to throw in a free cookie and thank the mother after the transaction. He wondered how it felt, growing up in this world. These kids had no idea of the outbreak. They knew vaguely that before their birth, something monsterous had happened, and now there was a whole different breed of human in the world. What would they think growing up? Would they care, or would they sleep through that part of their history lessons, skinny preteen arms resting on their textbooks and sliding off their desks?

He had recently submitted three art pieces to a scholarship contest and was checking his email on his phone for any reply when a familiar face loomed at the edge of his vision. How had they gotten in so silently? He immediately slipped his phone in his back pocket and smiled as big as he could to compensate for his sloppy attention, but the grin fell off his face.

"Kieran, you need to come home."

"Why are you here? You could've just called me. I'm working."

His mother twisted her hands together and he knew immediately it had to do with his condition.

"There was a warning tonight, some terrorist graffiti at city hall about killing PDS sufferers tonight. It's all over the news. I didn't want you taking the bus. I'm here to drive you home."

His first reaction was to push her away, annoyed at her motherly worries and her coddling nature, but this was the name of the game now. If there were threats, there were serious possibilities of him being singled out and as much as he hated hiding, the best thing to do was the hole up at home until the all clear sounded on the news.

"I need to talk to my boss first. Don't worry, okay? I'll be a few minutes."

He disappeared into a back room, slim hands untying his apron behind his back, as his mother tapped her nails on the counter and checked the local news on her phone. Good thing it was dead in the store, she thought, or else she would've had to wait to take poor Kier home.

"I hate doing this, honey."

"I know."

They were silent as they walked out to car and Kieran thought weakly of ways to resist and strike back at his faceless oppressors. He had needed that money and he had only been on shift two hours before his mother showed up. All because of an ignorant threat.

"Better safe than sorry, y'know."

"I know."

He ducked into the car and buckled in, instinctively sliding downward in his seat to avoid chances of a driver looking over and being spooked. His entirely life had become catering to the living population in an effort not to scare them.

They drove home without incident and Kieran stared out the window at the gentle sunset, scratched and bisected by the dark, leafless trees. It was chalking up to be a creepy night even without the lockdown.

"I'm pretty sure all the families are doing this, or at least I hope," his mother said as she ushered him into the house and bolt locked the door. "I'll get the supplies. Just in case."

His father wouldn't be home for another three hours and Kieran stood around numbly in the hallway, watching his mother dash out to the shack in their yard where she kept her 'supplies', an apply named chainsaw and several nasty-looking bashing weapons.

He'd never get over the ease with which she wielded the chainsaw, but then she remembered what she had lived through and the hell she had to fight against every day of the Rising. She dropped the chainsaw next to the door and set a club against the couch. "I hate these, but I have to," she repeated. "May as well get some food and settle down for the night, hmm?"

"May as well," Kieran echoed. "Stay away from the windows, doll," she called as he drifted into the kitchen, wondering what he could pretend to eat that night.

…

Aside from a gunshot that made his mother jump out of her skin, the night was calm, punctuated by anxious coughs from either of his parents, who had sat rigid on the couch together for quite a few hours, TV down low, hands on their knees. Kier had hid in his bedroom, trying to draw, nerves too fried.

The body count surfaced the next day as Kieran was getting dressed.

Two 'rotters' burned alive, one family robbed. Who mourned? The news was unsure of how to frame and resorted to just spitting out the information and then getting testimony from shaken living counterparts. He could've spit. He had a lot to say, not that they would've aired it. Media coverage of his 'kind' was scarce, as people generally didn't like dead opinions.

He was thankful his mother had picked him up from work.

... 

One night, after he had been wasting time on his laptop while the sun bled into the landscape outside and sunk into darkness, he realized he hadn't seen Jem in three days.

The thought made him look up from the screen and take PM his hands off the keyboard to grope for his phone. That couldn't be right. Three days?

But looking back, it was true - he had worked two of those three days, moderate shifts, and had come home to an empty house. There was no music blaring from her room and no customary slamming of doors that announced her presence. Hello, I'm here, now leave me alone.

The day between those two he had free, and flipping through the events - fake breakfast, some telly, a walk, a community meeting, few pages of a book read - he hadn't seen her, and she wasn't home tonight.

His phone read 6:29 PM. Where was she? His initial reaction was panic. His parents must have noticed - they were out at a movie tonight, one of their rare allowances for romance. He fumbled with his phone for a moment and then decided to text her.

Hey, haven't seen you in a few days. Where are you? You've been home, right?

He set the phone against his thigh and slowly resumed browsing, although his eyes flickered over to check it more than he'd like to admit, two white spheres under the glare of his laptop screen. No response. Twenty minutes, no response.

She had been very quiet last time he had seen her, which wasn't unduly strange. She had her moods. Her hair was a new rich brown, which he liked on her just as much as the red, and his parents breathed a sigh of relief as they watched her tone her clothing down. She was entering college in a few months and seemed to be readying herself for it. But why wasn't she home?

Maybe she moved out all of a sudden, he thought. Did she have savings? That'd be fantastic for her, but she couldn't afford anywhere in Roarton just yet. Kieren momentarily envisioned a small apartment with her band posters in the kitchen and the bedroom, she had tea on and a cute rug in the livingroom, curled up with her hair in a ponytail, sitting on the couch for some telly.. but she wasn't there, and she wasn't home.

It had been three weeks since the night of the last anti-PDS violence warning. There had been a squabble in the papers a few days ago about how there was some sort of uprising against the injustice by some PDS extremist group, but aside from that, everything in Roarton seemed to be calm water. So where was his little sister?

As if summoned, there were heavy bootsteps on the front porch and Kieren sat straight up and lowered his laptop screen a little. His phone hadn't buzzed. There was Jem's massive beast of a keychain clinking against the door before the lock cleaved to its form and the door swung open with too much force.

"Jem," he breathed, looking at the figure who was pulling her keys out of the lock and kicking her boots off at the door. "I texted you. Where've you been?"

"Out," she said simply, and threw her keys onto the counter. Everything she was doing seemed overdone, he noticed, with a sinking feeling - she was upset and covering it up like she did, which meant slamming everything and talking about nothing. She granted him the merest glance and he immediately caught the flinch when she saw him sitting plain-faced on the couch, partially in darkness. His pale face was outlined by a lamp in the far corner and the harsh light of his laptop screen and he looked scared, watching her stomp around the kitchen, looking for a snack.

"You haven't been home in days, I don't think," he said. No response, but she seemed to have found some pretzels. "I missed you," he tried.

"Mhmm," she mumbled, grabbing the peanut butter off the shelf and turning off the kitchen light. He sat, twisted on the couch while she darted past him like he might strike out and grab her as she went by, and the conversation ended with her customary door-slam.

What the hell was that?

Kieren turned back to his laptop and rubbed his eyes, above the patch where the skin had been ripped in a fight a few months prior. School wasn't working out well for him, and now this? This.. one-sided familial upheaval? Oh, there goes the music. Wailing guitars. She's probably laying on her bed, eating, texting.

He had a sudden distaste for sitting around on the internet and shoved his laptop off his lap. It was time for a breather. The night was cool - he couldn't feel it, but he could tell by people's dress and the harshness of the wind, so he layered appropriately, hoodie on, and stepped out of the house.

Maybe she'd want to talk later.

In the weeks that followed, Jem seemed to curl into herself like a dead spider, bringing all of her tighter and tighter to herself, further and further away from her family. With everything she cared about bunched tight behind a tired face and a rude mouth, she wore her parents out. More than one dinner was spent in silence. Kieren stopped fake-eating and sometimes bothered not to come to dinner at all, leaving his mother, father, and Jem to sit around the table, scraping forks against plates, avoiding each other's eyes, all breathing together and saying nothing.

He had no idea she was up till 3 every night cause she refused to sleep, and she had been faking friendliness towards Kieren for ages. He completely missed her shaky hands. Call it bad timing or blindness, but the more she drew away, the more he let go of her. Looking at him was like looking at a crystaline fragment of a nightmare : a thing become real, glistening with white eyes, moving and living in her house, something that slept in the room next to hers. It didn't eat, didn't breathe, and it always wanted to talk to her.

So she didn't sleep. And she held her gun. She held her gun a lot.

...

(AUTHOR'S NOTE ABOUT THE TIMING OF THIS FIC: So I originally started this as a post-S1 fic and now that we've been graced with S2, I'm continuing it as what happened between 1 and 2, branching into 2. c:

ALSO, I cannot believe the love you guys have given my writing. The fact that so many people love it makes me want to cry. I recently broke 2k views on this story, so as a thank-you, I'm going to be releasing a redone version of the first two chapters. 3 Expect better writing, MORE writing, and more delicious INF details! You are all my best dead friends forever!)

The Walker household was an entirely different portrait of a British family than it had been a few years ago. If the members were gathered together for a picture, the gales of change would have turned them away from each other without them even noticing - Jem, off to the side, Kieren, scraping up a nervous smile, their parents, tense and holding each other but no one else. Kieren thought about this a lot while he sat alone one morning working on a sketch. He had just dropped out of his local community college. He had lasted two months and found that he had a sudden distaste for schooling.

Maybe it was the 6th sense for staring he'd developed since he rose from the grave, but he knew that people were keeping an eye on him. It was required in his application that he mention his date of rising so that the administration knew. The work he did felt pointless and he found himself longing to be home in his room, tooling around with sketches and acrylics, stepping over piles of paper. His sanctuary was home now and school was a poor substitute for comfort, so he simply stopped showing up.

Today, he was working on a landscape piece. He liked to work all at once- he tended towards a very light sketch - oh, say, 15 minutes of concept work at the very most, before he dove right in with a brush. Kieren found the risk-taking exciting and more tastefully with a thing like expression. If he wanted his true ideas to come out, he didn't want to give himself time to misthink, he wanted to get the colors down as soon as possible.

He was sketching out the background and his heart sunk as soon as he heart boot steps on the landing above. Jem was going out. He heard her go into the bathroom, drop something, come back out, and start down the stairs. He found something in his heart boarding itself up as if in defense during wartime. He focused very intensely on his line quality while she stomped past him without stopping. He felt- even though he hadn't looked up- he felt like she hadn't seen him or even bothered to look.

I had my contacts in, he thought weakly, numbly, setting his pencil down and rubbing his eyes once she closed the door. She could've looked at me.

There was nothing he could tell anyone at this point that would help, because most of the people he knew in Roarton were the living. His parents bristled and fell into an uncomfortable silence about anything concerning the feelings of a PDS sufferer, especially their son. So he wrote dedicated letters to Amy in the time he had to spare, now that he was out of school.

Amy,

You know, this town is very different without you. I know you'd probably laugh at me for being dramatic, or whatever, but it seems grayer. I'm having a hard time talking to people.

Tell me more about your commune. Is there one closer to Roarton? I need to talk to someone about how I feel. I can't just pop into any self-help group, because they're not made for US. I need to talk to other PDS sufferers. I don't want to deal with any movements or ideologies, I just want some support. You would think there would be more, but Roarton is so isolated, you know.

It's nothing health-wise. I'm feeling fine! I'm just very alone these days. But don't worry about me.

How are you? Have you met anyone? (Don't cancel our wedding!)

Forever your optimist (and missing you sorely),

\- Kieren

These letters were always complimented two weeks or so after he sent them by an envelope bursting with excitement and correspondence. When Kieren pulled her letter out of the mailbox, he could feel the ghost of her arms around him, squeezing him in childlike jest, Amy's enduring need to play and touch coming through in her looping script.

MY KIEREN!

Oh Kieren, you're such a ROMANTIC writer. I hate to think of you moping and dragging yourself around town without me. I'm not supposed to say anything, but here's a little hint - don't call the presses, but - you might be seeing more of me soon! So snap out of it!

The commune is so lovely down here. We've got all sorts of creative people - lots of dancers! We're trying to inspire PDS fashion and dance across the globe (or just the countryside). I don't think it's catching on, but I'll model some new moves out for you once I swing by, if you can handle it. OOPS! I SPOILED THE SURPRISE!

Anyways, I've met someone. WINK WINK! Well, maybe. He seems interested.. oh Kieren, you should see him, he's really something. I was looking at him while he was preaching the other night, and I thought he was MOREGEOUS - more than gorgeous. He works as one of the prophets and he's very, very inspiring. We spend a lot of time on the theory of the risen and the gifts that it gave us, you know, and it makes me feel blessed.. we're special, Kieren, especially you.

Don't forget that! And don't be too love-sick.

Your BDFF,

AMY


End file.
